Big Damo Reveals How PROGRESS Deal Came Together, ‘Our Goal Is To Make This The Number One Independent Promotion’

On May 26, it was announced that Big Damo and Nikki Storm (Nikki Cross in WWE) had acquired PROGRESS and DEFY Wrestling.

The deal seemingly came out of nowhere as Cross had just been released by WWE and Damo had just officially signed with MLW.

Speaking to Cultaholic, Damo explained how the deal came together.

“Genuinely, this was not on the bingo card for us, either. We have talked about a million different scenarios for a long time. We have been wrestling for 22 years, Nikki has been wrestling for 18 years, so we know there is a time limit. We are going to have to start thinking about what is the future and we thought that was going to be with our little Scottish promotion in Glasgow,” he said. “This opportunity came along a few weeks ago. Not long after Nikki had been released, actually. It was only a few days after. I’ll just be honest, I was in Belfast about to jump on a plane going to another show and I had to sit thinking about it on the plane like, ‘This is wild. There’s no way this could happen.’ Then I come off the plane and we start talking about it seriously. At first we were talking with James Amner, he’s been in situ at PROGRESS for a long, long time. He’s one of the hidden gems. He hates credit in every single way but he’s one of the reasons PROGRESS has been ticking over at all for maybe a decade.”

Damo said he spoke with Martyn Best, the now former co-owner of the company.

“When I broached Nikki with it, she was like, ‘What?’ So there’s been plenty of conversations and, listen, the boys made it very easy. I dealt directly with Martyn Best…and he was very patient with me and we were able to come to the best agreement for both of us. That was one of the most amazing experiences in terms of how easy he made that for me. This could have been very, very difficult and this could have been out of our reach, realistically, because we are living in the United States. That is still our home. Obviously that will change in the next few years but that is our handicap, effectively, in one regard. But now it’s putting us in a position where we’re starting to think about, ‘Okay, what do we want to do next?’ and PROGRESS Wrestling has answered a lot of those questions very quickly,” said Damo.

He concluded by saying, “We can now start thinking about long term, and that’s something Nikki and I were talking about the other day. Our goal is to make this into the number one independent promotion on the planet.”

The first show under the guidance of Damo and Storm will take place on June 7 with Chapter 195: Wonderbrawl II.